


Mirror, Mirror

by Aegir



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Mirror Universe, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-11-24 01:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18159557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aegir/pseuds/Aegir
Summary: In the wake of Thanos' snap: T'Challa struggles to hold his kingdom together, Peter Parker begins working with Pepper Potts, Peter Quill seeks vengeance, Hope finds herself helping both Cassie and Ava, Sam accepts new responsibilities, Bucky befriends a tree, Wanda finds gain as well as loss and the Avengers reform.A mirrorverse post-Infinity War story





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a mirrorverse, in which the characters who were dusted at the end of Infinity War are all alive, and the characters who survived Infinity War were dusted (there may be some characters revealed as alive in Endgame who are put in the 'dusted' group here, but I'm going off what was known at the end of Infinity War). Otherwise it’s largely canon compliant up to the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp.  
> Characters who appear only on TV shows will not be in this story, partly because I haven’t watched most of the TV material, and partly because it’s difficult enough to juggle all the characters just sticking to the movies. Captain Marvel characters will not appear either, because I wrote this before the movie was released.

Anarchy. 

More than half of life on earth is gone.  Transport crashes.  Vital care in hospitals fails as half the staff vanish.  Life means all life: human, animal, marine, reptile, even plants.  Young starve without parents.  Entire ecosystems are dislocated. 

Vital systems crumble.  Governments collapse.  Across the earth chaos is repeated.

Wakanda is one of the few lands to stand firm.  T’Challa holds firm, not easily, not without struggle and cost and profound grief.  His mother is gone, his sister is gone; the man who a few short years earlier was part of a loving family now stands as the last tree left in the forest. 

Nakia returns from Oakland within a month, her eyes bleak, orphaned children with nowhere else to go with her.  Ayo is promoted to lead the Dora Milaje.  The country holds.

They cannot, even Nakia acknowledges they cannot, offer refuge to all who need it, though they try to do what they can for all who reach their borders.  T’Challa will not come to other lands as a conqueror.  He also will not deny the heroes who remain the tools that will help them help others.  Wakanda still has scientists.  The country will live.

T’Challa grieves behind closed doors.  He will see his loved ones again in the lands beyond, but that knowledge does not make him miss them less.  But the King must be strong.

He does not know who the boy is at first.  He only knows after he walks into a fight between Nakia’s orphans and some of the Wakandan children, a fight he almost turns and walks away from because he’s tired and grieving, but in the end he steps in and tries to reason with them.  One of the boys is still shouting angrily, too angrily for the words to make much sense, but when he pulls down his lip to show a Wakandan tattoo T’Challa knows this is Killmonger’s son.

The boy’s name is Karl, he refuses to give another.  He does not know much Wakandan.  T’Challa knows that he can turn away and say nothing.  Or he can take the boy as his kin.  To do that he must tell the truth, all of it, no festering secrets. 

He chooses truth.

~~~

They need to get the kid back to earth.  It’s pretty much the last part of the galaxy Peter Quill wants to go to, but he can’t just leave a kid stuck on a dead planet, even if all he wants to do right now is work out a way of murdering Thanos and go do it.  Obviously they need to get the wizard back as well, even though he doesn’t ask for it.  He’s gone completely uncommunicative in fact, even when Quill rages at him, wanting answers on where Groot and Rocket are, on where Thanos is and what is the best way of murdering him

The kid just seems stunned.  “We lost,” he repeats.  Then “I have to find my aunt.”  Quill hopes the kid’s aunt has survived.   Somehow they get into a comedy crosstalk when the kid calls him Mr Starlord again.  Quill tries to make things easier by saying “Peter,” and gets a “Yes?” in reply.  After that they stick to “Starlord” and “Spiderman.”

“Can’t you do something?” he overhears the kid ask, not long before they reach Earth.  “You’re a wizard.”

“All my life I feared failure,” Strange says.  “Now I must face it.”

Very helpful.

They stay on Earth just long enough to see a woman who must be the kid’s aunt run to him crying.  Then they talk about looking for Rocket, Groot and the man Drax still insists on calling Pirate-Angel.  But there’s no answer on Rocket’s communicator.  No good trying to call Groot, he’d stamped on his communicator in a tantrum not long before they found Pirate-Angel, and they’d been out of spares.    “Rocket’ll find us,” Quill says, not wanting to think about the alternative.

~~~

Whoever designed the ship certainly wasn’t the Grandmaster, because he would never have bothered with life-crafts for everyone on board, let alone with a built in communications system to help them keep together.  Valkyrie really just wants somewhere to get drunk, but that annoying heroic idiot Thor had shouted “Get them to safety,” before he went charging back into the fight to look for his shifty brother, and that is somehow infuriatingly hard to ignore.  So she figures out the communications system, makes sure every craft in the refugee fleet is on course for Earth (why Earth, anyway, it sounds like a hellhole backwater but she can’t pretend to have better ideas), and then goes looking for alcohol.  There isn’t any in the craft; more proof the Grandmaster had nothing to do with this.

Valkyrie is working up some serious anger when people start disintegrating and _what the hell this can’t even be alcoholic delirium, because she hasn’t had a drink in forever._

She’s slumped in a corner wondering if it’s worth trying to set co-ordinates for Sakaar when someone starts shaking her, it’s a young boy babbling something about a ship trying to extend a docking tunnel.  Valkyrie picks her sword up.  If she can’t get drunk, perhaps she can get killed. 

It’s the Grandmaster’s orgy ship, as it turns out, which she remembers now that a group of Asgardians had used for evacuation.  Good.  There’s bound to be some booze on there.

What is also there, as it turns out, is another woman with a sword.  Valkyrie isn’t really in the mood for talking, but the woman blocks her way and starts talking about heroism.  She doesn’t take no for an answer easily.

“Seeing a Valkyrie return gave our people hope.  They need that now, more than ever.”

She wants to say she doesn’t care, that hope is their problem.  What she does say is, “To hell with Earth.  We just need to get somewhere habitable.  I’ll get working on it, if you get me a drink.”

“Deal,” says the woman.  Then “My name is Sif.”

“Just call me Val,” says the Valkyrie.

~~~

Sam dreams of Rhodey’s voice calling him.  Another lost wingman.  He’d relived seeing Rhodey fall, being too late to catch him, at night for months; then been so glad for his friend, seeing him mostly recovered.  Logically he knows there would have been nothing he could do to save Rhodes, but he could have stopped him dying alone.

Steve and Natasha being gone leaves him feeling lopped.  He wakes at night reaching out for Nat.  What they’d had, what they’d come to have in those cheap motels, hadn’t been enough for them to be lovers, but it had been more than just screwing.  And Steve … Sam had changed his life utterly because he had recognised in Steve Rogers  a man whose moral compass followed straight and now he’d lost that man and with him the best friend Sam has had since Riley died.

T’Challa, in the middle of everything, takes the time to get Sam in touch with his mother, offer to fly her to Wakanda.  She’s reluctant to come at first, only agrees on condition she can bring whoever she chooses with her.   It’s quite a collection, mostly elderly and ill people with nobody to look after them, with a sprinkling of lost and angry kids.  It helps.

He can’t stop.  He gave up everything to go back and fight, and now he’s lost so much more he can’t stop fighting.  The world is a mess and there’s a need for people who can help.  He lays this out to T’Challa.  He hadn’t expected that would make him the Avengers’ new leader, but who else is going to do it?   T’Challa has his hands full in Wakanda. 

During the time that follows Sam does a lot of travelling, sleeps in places that make cheap motels look good and does none of it alone.  Sometimes they help and sometimes they can’t.  He makes a solid friendship with a king and begins building bridges back in the US.  For this role he needs a more striking look, so accepts the Wakandan offer of a red and white protective suit.

T’Challa is sure there’s an afterlife.  He claims to have visited it.  Sam hopes his lost friends can see what the New Avengers are doing.  He thinks they’d approve.

~~~

“I am Groot!”

“You and me both,” Bucky says.  He doesn’t understand the words, but the angry, desperate disbelieving tone is clear enough.

“I am Groot!” 

“It _sucks_ ,”  Bucky says.  “I don’t know much about your Racoon friend, but I’m damn sure he didn’t deserve what happened to him.”  Groot (nobody’s even sure if that’s his name but they need to call him something) had torn up the ground in the anguish of his loss, his screams so loud that it was only with difficulty a couple of the Wakandans had been restrained from taking an axe to him. 

After Groot has spent a couple of weeks living in miserable anger outside Bucky’s hut, Bucky is fairly sure he’s pretty young in tree terms.  He just acts so young and it’s painful. 

At first Bucky asks the surviving local kids to keep an eye on Groot when he is away; the sheer strangeness of Groot providing a slight, if only slight, distraction for them in the days after the Annihilation.  Bucky doesn’t refuse the missions.   Wilson just walked in one day and tossed a gun at him and he accepted because if Wilson, of all people, thinks he’s needed then it must be desperate.  The third time Groot throws a foot-stomping tantrum until they agree to take him, and after that there’s agreement that a killer tree is certainly suited to some missions, though not all of them.

He knows something is up the day T’Challa accompanies Wilson.  They’ve got a box with them, but this time what’s inside isn’t an arm.

Bucky says no.  T’Challa tells him Captain America is a symbol of hope and the world needs hope.  Bucky says if they want a new Cap it should be someone the symbol matters to and it never mattered to him.

“You’re not wrong,” says Wilson.  “But you’re what we’ve got.  There aren’t any other white guys who can do a halfway decent impression of Steve’s fighting.”

Wilson’s not wrong either.  So he takes the shield.  He’s been so many people, trying to become one more is exhausting.  But the world needs a lie, and he’s pretty good at those.

~~~

Pepper hadn’t found the right moment to tell Tony she was pregnant.  It hadn’t been planned, and honestly she’d been perfectly happy with the idea she’d never have children.  She knew Tony would be pleased, that he’d make all sorts of fancy gadgets and vows to be a great father, and the messy reality would quickly have him retreating to the lab and hiring someone else to do the hard work of parenting instead of him.  

Then he’s gone and half the world is gone.

Figures on a bank balance quickly mean nothing.  But tools mean a lot.  So do those who can make more, even as the systems they worked within crumble, warp and mutate.  Pepper cannot make, but she can organise.  Stark Industries, after a fashion, survives.  Peter Parker, that kid who’d just turned up on the doorstep because he thought she deserved to know what had happened to Tony, proves to have a real knack for invention and adaptation and is soon a member of the gutted research team (Pepper resolves to ask Tony why he’d never done anything to encourage the kid’s obvious gifts – then remembers she can’t too late). 

She calls her daughter Hera.  Tony would probably have wanted Maria, but he _isn’t here_ , and however much she knows its unreasonable Pepper is angry with him about that.  It had been weeks before she even knew whether he’d survived the Annihilation because he _wasn’t there_.

Along with so much else, government walls of secrecy have collapsed.  Revelations of Ross sending Chitauri based weapons to terrorist groups have spread.  Little is done, there is little to do.  Ross is gone, and Damage Control no longer exists, collapsed in the face of too much damage.  But Peter Parker is shocked.  That Tony Stark had given Chitauri weapons to Ross and Ross had given them to terrorists hurts the boy.

“Tony always had a habit of trusting the wrong people,” Pepper says, by explanation.  In reply she gets a story of a man called Vulture, and why he had turned to crime.  Pepper winces.  She had always believed in corporate competition, been unimpressed when Tony endangered the company because he’d had a guilt attack about making weapons.  Now the boy’s idealism makes her wonder what questions Hera may ask when she’s older.  Peter has not thought to blame her, but Pepper knows she can’t duck responsibility.  Damage Control had done more harm than good; that the Stark Empire had been too big for any one person to keep watch on all the parts is true, but still an excuse.  She had seen growing that empire as her cause.  Perhaps she should have aimed to shrink it.

Nick Fury had shown up at Avengers Compound not long after the Annihilation, looking grim and old, Maria Hill his shadow as ever.  Pepper lets them use it, although there’s no Avengers left.  Soon though Fury is talking to Wakanda and one morning Pepper almost walks straight into Sam Wilson. 

General Ross had been one of those to vanish in the Annihilation, and though the Accords haven’t been formally repealed most laws are being ignored these days. 

(She cries for Rhodey.  He’d worked so hard to get better.  It wasn’t fair.)

So the Avengers are back, and Peter is one of them now, but the world is still a disaster area and Pepper is terrified for her child.  They need to fix the world for Hera to be safe, and what she’s been doing helps, but it isn’t enough.

Tony’s suits are still here, untouched.  FRIDAY is still here. 

Pepper goes to the room where the suits hang.  Their empty eyes seem to stare at her.  She makes up her mind.

~~~

Wanda is numb.  In a distant part of her mind a voice mockingly asks her why she’d ever thought she could be happy, why she hadn’t known anyone she dared to love must die.  Another voice, that sounds rather like Natasha, tells her it’s self-centred to think the universe really sees her as that important.  Natasha , who is gone.

She had once asked Steve how he kept living after losing everyone he cared for.  One day at a time he said.  Steve, who is gone.

Wanda takes it one day at a time.  She does some missions with Sam, but the power she felt facing down Thanos demands more of an outlet, the utter wretchedness that all that was for nothing demands more of an outlet. 

Vision had believed she could alter reality itself.  Wanda begins to try, just in small things.  At first she finds she can’t change very much, or for very long, she can, perhaps, cause a scarf to change colour for a few minutes, or cause the twigs on a tree to bend another way. 

After a while she can do more.  She can steer clouds, make them shed their rain where it is needed.  She can soften frosts before they bite too deep into green shoots.  She can do more.  Vibranium cannot heal everything, nor can Helen Cho’s cradles.  Both are limited in how far they can heal old injuries.  But Wanda learns she can persuade the body to find new ways to heal itself.

Only once does she bring herself to go to Their Place.  The place that she and Vision had made in their stolen time together.  It had begun as a game, he had wanted to understand what it meant to be a normal human, and since nothing about Wanda’s life was normal they had created a little imitation of normality, a model home in another world only they could visit.  Wanda had seen it as a game.  She’d begun to be less sure Vision did when he’d created the first child, a dark-haired boy whose features had a marked similarity to Wanda’s own.  Wanda, partly out of competitiveness, and partly from other feelings she doesn’t dare to name, had created a twin, another boy who resembled her brother. 

She goes back to the Place, just once, and it is empty.  Gaping holes in the walls, half the furniture gone, no small voices greeting her.  After that she stays in the real world. 

She is shaken to the bottom of her being when two of the Dora Milaje  return from the borders of Wakanda and with them are her children.  She recognises them immediately, would have done even if the dark-haired boy hadn’t been able to cause small red sparks to fly from his hands. 

They had been found on the day of the Annihilation, Wanda learns. The Border Tribe had kept them fed, but there were other orphaned children and they had little time to spare for two white strangers.

Wanda is terrified.  She hadn’t meant to do that.  She hadn’t thought she could do that.  Even when reflection tells her that it must have been a product of the reaction between her powers and the Mind Stone, an unrepeatable one off, it terrifies her.

“You and Vision made children together,” Sam tells her.  “That’s what people do.  It’s not weird.  You just had an unusual method.”  It helps a bit.  What helps more is that they are clearly real children.  In the other world they had been well-behaved fantasies.  Here they are as much trouble as any two toddlers would be.  Wanda really doesn’t feel old enough to be a mother, but there is plenty of help.  She has to try.

~~~

Hope goes looking for Cassie straight away.  She doesn’t know the kid very well, but someone should look.  It takes longer than she’d like, even with Luis helping.  Two days to learn that Cassie’s mother and stepfather had gone in the Annihilation, six more weeks to find her.  Houses are being systematically looted, children left on their own no longer dare stay in their homes.  Nor do a lot of adults.  Hope does not have that problem, as Hank had built their house to shrink.

Cassie will not talk about what happened.  She is alone when Hope finds her, thin and dirty, with a sprained wrist. 

“My parents are gone too,” Hope tells her, when she has got some hot food down Cassie.  Their eyes meet, and she sees the first bond form.  So many fathers and mothers are gone, but those words, to Cassie, still mean something. 

Cassie doesn’t want comfort, she wants a suit.  This is just as well, because comfort is not something Hope is good at, but suits she can provide.  A short time ago she wouldn’t have hesitated to say Cassie was too young, but childhood doesn’t mean much now and the suit may give her some protection.  Cassie wants to be a hero like her father (Hope doesn’t tell her she’d always thought of Scott as more of a well-meaning idiot.)  She wants a suit like her father’s, even if that means no wings.

A month later Ava Starr walks through a wall into the room where they are having breakfast; her expression almost as feral as when they’d first fought.  Thankfully Cassie doesn’t seem too thrown, Hope is repeatedly amazed by what Cassie takes in stride and what she doesn’t.

“Bill?” Hope asks.  The younger woman’s bleak look is answer enough. 

“The phasing’s back.”  Ava keeps her words to the point.  “You said you’d help.”

“What’s phasing?” says Cassie.  Hope explains.  The discharge of Quantum energy from Janet (from her mother who she’d had back for mere weeks and lost again) had stabilised Ava, but she needed ongoing doses of Quantum medication.

“So we need to get it then,” Cassie says.  When Hope thinks about it, the girl isn’t wrong.  The world is past saving, but they can still help Ava.   They still have all the tech.    All they need is for Hope to train Ava and Luis in the recovery procedures.  She’d imagined for so long going to the Quantum Realm for her mother.  Instead she goes to collect energy for Ava.

She helps Ava, but can’t say she likes her.  Not until the day a group of men in uniform-like clothes (so many groups are claiming ‘official’ status now) try to seize Cassie as a hostage.  Ava is solid, stabilised, but she fights with intense ferocity, and some impressive moves.  They win, and travel hundreds of miles in the next few days. 

They can’t save the world, it’s way past saving.  But Cassie needs to believe they can be heroes, so Hope agrees to give her some training, and after a few days Ava offers to help.  Cassie is thrilled when she learns the Avengers are back.  Hope is less so, they’ve mostly spelt trouble to her, although the day she sees Pepper Potts fold back the helmet of her suit to address TV cameras about the importance of rescue work she begins to reconsider.  Ava is suspicious, connecting them with SHIELD, whom she still loathes.  Most of the old team seem gone, although one day a red, white and blue shield is captured on film flying straight to the target.  Not everyone is pleased, as to some Captain America had been a symbol of the destruction of Sokovia. 

Cassie’s conviction is hard to shake off, so when Luis brings word of a group that have managed to get their hands on chemical weapons and are attempting to carve out their own fiefdom in Minnesota, Hope argues against Ava’s fears, and hacks into Stark Industries systems long enough to leave a message.  So she fights for the first time alongside Falcon, Rescue (the name the public have given Ms Potts), Spiderman, an Ent whose name apparently is Groot and Captain America.  A Captain America that is.

~~~

“Why did he do it?” It’s Ava who asks the question on a team debrief.  “What did he want?”  It’s not the first time there have been anguished whys, not the first time they have asked the unanswerable.  Peter had caught some snatches of Thanos making a grand speech on Titan, but been too keyed up to make much sense of it.

“We don’t even know what he did do,” Sam says.  “Does it matter why?”

“What if he wants to do it again?” asks Peter.  The question settles, nobody has an answer.  Thanos had withdrawn with his army while everyone was too stunned by the disappearances to react, until now none of them have had enough breathing space to consider where he had gone , or whether he would be satisfied with his win.

“We need to know more,” it is T’Challa who takes the lead. 

They hold a full conference, and the conclusion is that they cannot leave this be.  They must try every method of learning more, if they are to succeed in protecting Earth next time.

“We are not really the Avengers,” Pepper says, looking tired.  “They are gone.”

“No, we are not them,” says Hope.  She stands up.  “They failed.  We will be better.”


	2. Chapter 2

Some days are harder than others.  Fifty per cent of humanity gone.  The whole world locked in desperate uncomprehending grief.  The numbers are too big to process the gaping holes in lives impossible to ignore.  There is nobody who hasn’t had swathes of their life cut away, nobody who doesn’t grieve every day for the lives brutally cut short, the loss of the years that should have been lived.  It could be called unbearable, except so many bear it.

Cassie has lost everyone.  So has Hope.  Ava has lost the one person who cared for her.  It’s a bond of sorts, but the bond doesn’t bring people back.

T’Challa is bleakly grateful not to have lost everyone, but he has lost far too much.

Peter feels almost guilty he still has his aunt.  Ned survived, though half his other classmates did not. 

Sam still looks around for his lost friends, expecting to share a joke. 

Groot has lost everyone, and Bucky understands loss, but he knows he can’t replace them.

Fury tries to put the dead out of his mind as he works.  He’s done that for decades, but there were so many lost, so fast.

Loss is so familiar to Wanda she wonders why it even hurts.

~~~

Formir.  It’s the only clue they have.  Nebula, before she turned to ash, had said that Thanos had taken Gamora to Formir.  That is where they go once the ship is repaired, which takes too long with no Rocket, and once they have managed to establish where Formir is.  It’s not on any map.

Drax seems almost happy.  Killing Thanos is what he always wanted after all.  Mantis is wretched.

“I don’t want to die,” she says sadly.

“Can we take you somewhere?” Quill offers.  This isn’t really Mantis’ battle.

“I have nowhere to go.  And,” she adds, looking at Drax, “I don’t want you to die either.” 

“It will be a noble death,” Drax proclaims.

Quill doesn’t care about nobility.  He just wants Thanos dead.

Formir is weird as hell.  A guy who looks like Skeletor with a red dye job shows up, and Quill has to get pretty basic with his language to explain that he doesn’t care about a damn rock, he just wants to know where Thanos is.  That gets Red Skeletor to leave, but it doesn’t get answers.

There’s no trace of Thanos and they make camp in the end.  Quill dreams about Gamora, which isn’t new.  Gamora poking him in the ribs with her foot is.

“You’re still an idiot,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he says.  Sorry for failing her, sorry for failing the universe.

“Save it.  You need to find the stones.”

“Will that help me kill Thanos?”

“You can’t kill him without them.  You think I want you getting squashed like a bug?  Or getting Drax and Mantis killed?”

“I miss you,” he says.  Then, “I’ll avenge you.”

“The hell with that.  Vengeance doesn’t help.  Just stop him.”

Quill wakes up and thinks for a bit.  He still wants to revenge Gamora, but  keeping an ear out for any word on the Stones at the same time as he looks for Thanos wouldn’t hurt.  Thanos most likely still has them with him, and if he doesn’t, well the Stones shouldn’t just be left lying around.

~~~

“The Stones have to be the key,” Sam says, in another ‘how can we stop it happening again’ brainstorming session.  “Does he still have them?”

“The gauntlet cracked,” Wanda says.  She focuses her mind, the memory holds such pain.  “Some of the stones seemed missing.  I’m not sure which.”

“Well, can we find them?  If we fight him with his own methods we might have a chance.”

“It’s a great and terrible power you talk of,” T’Challa says, “Should we attempt to wield it?”

Sam shrugs.  “If the alternative is more death.”

Problem is the only clue they have is Wanda’s link with the Mind Stone.  Can she trace it? 

“I can’t,” Wanda says, several sessions later.  “I can’t feel it at all.  It’s as though it no longer exists.”

~~~

The cavern of the heart-shaped herb has been restored, stocked with plants collected from wild corners.  Kisani, Zuri’s successor, is doubtful about letting even the king use it at this time, it breaks the normal patterns, but it is a way to look for answers and after a long talk she agrees.

T’Challa soon learns in fact the Panthers have no answers; Wakanda has never dealt with Infinity Stones.  A wasted trip then, but T’Challa still has a personal question.  He has seen only his father and the long line of Panthers stretching into the far past.  He has not seen his mother or Shuri.

“They have not reached us,” his father tells him.

“No, that cannot be.”  He had not seen them die, but others he trusted had done so.  “Half our people died.”

“They are not here.”

How can that be?  Had the souls of the dead become somehow trapped?

A Panther steps forward.  “So, you are old enough for a beard now?”

“Grandmother?” 

“Your world is out of balance,” Queen Nanali tells him, “It is not whole.  This cannot endure.”

“What must I do?”

The Panthers look at him with glowing eyes.

~~~

Wanda had dreamed so many times her brother was alive; at first she believes her dreams of Vision living are no different.  It is odd though.  The Vision in her dreams is white, where her love was red, and Wanda herself is never truly present.  She watches as an observer on someone else’s existence.  Even stranger is that her dreams have Stark in them.  Wanda had forgiven him – she had no right to do otherwise – but she certainly did not expect to dream of the man.

She doesn’t go on missions so often now, only if it’s something big.  A lunatic hijacking a bunch of nuclear warheads is big.  On the way back most of the team sleep, but Wanda makes herself stay awake, using meditation techniques to settle her powers to be sure lingering adrenaline in from the battle does not cause her to accidently use the powers in her sleep, while Bucky polishes his shield as he always does after a mission. 

“Steve would have been pleased,” she says, trying to do something to calm the trouble in his mind that she’s too tired to block.

“Maybe,” he says.  Then, “I try to ask him sometimes, in my dreams.  But he can never hear me.”

“You dream of Steve?”  It’s not a surprise. 

“I wish I could dream of him happy.  But he never is.  It’s like a reversed world where he’s lost us.”  He gestures round the jet.  “The only people alive there are the ones who are dead here.”

She doesn’t quite know why this is important, but it is.

~~~

“If the dead have not reached the ancestral plane then something is gravely wrong.”  T’Challa paces; Nakia, Ayo and Kisani in the room.  He cannot take this to the council, not yet.

“Could Thanos have prevented it somehow, with the Gauntlet?”

“We do not know his power or his reasons.  But if the souls of our people are trapped somehow, we must find a way to free them.”

“For that,” says Kisani, “We will need a new kind of power.”

“Perhaps it is time to explore the Shadow Physics again.”

“Have I missed something?” Ayo says.  “Shadow Physics?”

“It was a line of research I pursued while studying at an outside university.  My supervisor considered it alchemical claptrap, but then he did not believe in the existence of vibranium.  It may be what we need now.  Or perhaps not, but as no established science can explain this it is worth trying.”

~~~

Fury recommends Jane Foster for the Shadow Physics research team T’Challa begins to put together.  She doesn’t know much about vibranium, but her ideas about the cosmos are telling.  She brings a new perspective.

So, surprisingly, does Bucky Barnes.  He comes to T’Challa first with a suggestion the team resurrect the old map of his memories that Shuri made while working on removing the HYDRA codes.  In there, he says, there might be useful information about the Tesseract.  Indeed there is.

“I had not realised Zola used its energies on you.”

“He thought it would stabilise the serum.  Worked, I guess.  I think that’s why he could never recreate it.  Even with his best efforts SHIELD never let him near the Tesseract.”  Bucky’s memories do help, to an extent.  Fury contributes some SHIELD files that help also, although many of SHIELD’s Tesseract research records had been lost in various catastrophes.  Jane works on these with Bucky.  Not long after Hope Van Dyne joins the team also.

T’Challa misses his sister fiercely.  Shuri’s research interests had always differed from his, but he is sure she would have accepted this new challenge.  So much potential snuffed out by the whim of a maniac.  He fights to hold his nation together, he fights to help bring hope to the world, there is less time than he would have wished to spent on his science, as he feels again the pull of pure research that for a short while had almost seduced him into wishing he was not the heir to Wakanda.

They learn much, but not very much of help regarding the Infinity Stones, how Thanos might have prevented Wakandan souls from reaching the ancestral plane, or how they can stop him if he destroys life again.

~~~

The Wakandans are deeply interested in the Quantum Realm.  Hope is cautious, knowing her father’s near paranoia (oh, who is she fooling, Hank had been completely paranoid, but just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean an evil organisation isn’t out to steal your tech) but in the end she lets T’Challa and a couple of other scientists study the Quantum tunnel.  Ava takes longer to trust the Wakandans, although she’s fascinated by the country, but in the end she opens up to one of the scientists, who believes there is a way of helping her phase without pain or instability.

“It was useful,” Ava says.  “And I want to go on being useful.  I like fighting with the good guys.  SHIELD told me they were helping the world, but really they were helping themselves to more power.  But I don’t want to disappear into nothing.”

“I wish Shuri were here,” the Wakandan scientist, whose name is A’Kane says.  “She would be able to work this out much faster that I can.” 

“Was Shuri a friend?” Ava asks.  She’s still getting used to the idea of friends.  Perhaps Hope is one? 

“Friend, boss, brilliant scientist, King T’Challa’s sister.  She’d have been so excited by the Quantum Realm. But I’m what’s here, and I’ll help as much as I can, even though most of our research is concentrated on the Shadow Physics right now.”

  ~~~

Sam works with Pepper on PR.  He’s beginning to realise the original Avengers team had been too careless about what the rest of the world thought of them. 

“I could have done more,” Wanda says.  “I knew how they were hated in Sokovia, because I hated them.  When your country has been trampled over and over, a military group that comes and goes and leaves destruction behind just looks like the latest lot of invaders.  I was so horrified about where my hate had led me that I didn’t ask what we could learn.”

“Don’t put it all on yourself,” Sam says.  “There did need to be changes, but the Accords weren’t the answer.  The problem was never that we weren’t accountable; if we broke the law we could be prosecuted, same as everyone else, so making up a special set of new laws for enhanced people was stupid.   I’m not even going to talk about the human rights violations.”  He at least hadn’t been locked in a straitjacket and shock collar, but still being held in a cage with no lawyer and no idea if he’d ever get out was far from a holiday.  “But we weren’t listening enough to the people we were supposed to be protecting.  It was easiest, to think we were outside politicking, but it came back to bite us.”

Sam ends up giving some speeches.  Pepper suggests phrases, but he throws them out.  They’re soundbites.  As a VA counsellor Sam’s success had always come from discarding jargon and keeping it simple.  He concentrates on getting the basic message over.  _We want to defend Earth.  We want to stand against those who use strength to hurt those less strong.  We don’t want to ignore you.  We don’t want to be the weapon used by one country or group of countries against others._  

Pepper gives some speeches herself.  Unlike Sam she can pull off the soundbites.  Hope isn’t half bad either.

In some ways working with local people is easier with the world so chaotic.  Some states have collapsed altogether, including ones that had seemed completely stable.  Nobody wants this state of affairs to continue, but the Avengers cannot change it, so they work with it.  Where there is little government it no longer matters whether the views of the people in power are those of the people in the streets.  In other cases, T’Challa negotiates. 

“We always wanted to save people,” Sam says.  “We know we failed to stop the Annihilation.  We can’t change that.  We can only work to save other lives.”

It’s not simple or easy but they persevere.  They do rescue work in disaster areas, remain to help in clean up after fights.  The role of the Avengers slowly grows beyond what it had been.  Now they are negotiators as well as fighters.  Diplomats even.

 “You should chose a new team name,” T’Challa says to Sam one day.  Grief still lies on him heavily, but Wakanda needs him to go on.  Nakia is with him still, and last week Karl revealed that his Wakandan name is Jakarra.  They are rebuilding, amidst the struggle and the planning.  Life continues.

“People know the Avengers,” Sam says.  “Brand recognition.

“Not everyone trusts the brand.”  That was why Wakanda had supported the Accords to begin with.  It had been a mistake, as the post-Accords Avengers had been increasingly tied to the agenda of the US government.  He is aware of the risk the New Avengers will seem too tied to the Wakandan government, which is why he’d proposed Sam reach out to Fury and Pepper Potts.  “It’s a bad name choice in any case.  Revenge achieves nothing.  We fight to protect or bring justice.”

He’s right, Sam decides.  But it’s one thing to decide the team needs a name change and another to choose a new name.  Every suggestion is rejected by someone, until it becomes a game, throwing out more and more ridiculous suggestions.  Half the world is dead, but they still joke.  Can’t let the bastard get you down. 

~~~

 “Alright, weird question time,” Bucky says to Sam.  They are back at the US Avengers facility for now, in what is now the United West Coast of American States.  Fury is still trying to establish bases in some other countries.  “Do you dream about the people who died?”  That’s a dumb question, but before Sam can say so Bucky goes on, “I don’t mean normal dreaming about people who died.  I mean dreaming they are alive and we’re the ones who are dead.”

No.  Sam has a lot of dreams about dead people, but not that one.

“I thought it was just me,”  Bucky says, “but Groot’s been dreaming about his dad.”

“He has a dad?”

“As far as he’s concerned that racoon with a gun was his dad.  He’s dreaming about Thor and his dad, and he says they’re doing stupid stuff.  It’s tearing him up that he can’t find them and stop them.  It’s not just random dreams, he’s seeing a story.  And that’s what I see with Steve.  There’s Steve and Romanoff and some others.  That Ant-guy, Scott.”

“I haven’t had dreams like that,” Sam says.  They sound better than his dreams.

~~~

Karl is a quick learner, once he decided he wanted to train in the Wakandan way.  T’Challa has begun to wonder if he should train Karl to be the next Black Panther, he and Nakia have no children yet and nobody can deny life is uncertain.  There would, he knows, be serious opposition, but he thinks that a boy who has known poverty and hardship in another land could be a good thing for Wakanda.  As far as anything can be good in such a time of loss.  He doesn’t talk to Karl about it, but he starts to feel a little proud of the boy’s achievements.  Erik Stevens probably wouldn’t have liked that, but from all he can learn Kilmonger had been too consumed by his revenge to be much of a father.

Wanda still feels more like a sister than a mother.  Perhaps it’s because Tommy reminds her so much of Pietro.  Billy and Tommy: Vision had picked the names.  They wouldn’t have been Wanda’s choice, but she’s glad to have this part of him in her children.  Tommy isn’t as fast as Pietro yet, he isn’t so fast they can’t see him move, but he is still uncatchable for anyone without powers or mechanised transport.  Billy doesn’t quite seem to have a handle on his powers, but he managed to strike a boulder with lightning and look very pleased with himself afterwards.   Perhaps being more like a big sister is OK.

Cassie is so damn quick.  She’s already making modifications to her suits and is absorbing Wakandan technical knowledge like a sponge, faster Hope admits, than she herself is.  Cassie’s still angry about her losses a lot of the time but when the team agrees she’s old enough to start training with a view to being eased in on smaller missions in the future, it clearly helps.  Hope doesn’t have a lot to do with Cassie’s success, she knows that, but she lets herself be proud all the same.

Groot is quite a hit once the New Avengers go a little more public.  The world has embraced him as an Ent, which leads to Sam showing Groot _The Lord of the Rings_ movies, which he likes although he really wants a whole film series about Ents.  He’s also learned how to play Earth video games.  He’s angry and vulnerable and still good to people, Bucky finds him one day making fantastic patterns with his leaves to entertain the children.  He knows nothing of Groot-kind, and that probably makes living on Earth easier, however much he misses his family.

It’s painful, when Hope thinks Scott would be proud of Cassie, when Wanda wishes Pietro and Vision were here to see her children, when T’Challa thinks how well his sister would have got along with Peter and Cassie, when Pepper sees Hera smile in a way that reminds her of Tony, when Sam thinks how much Steve would have liked working with an Ent, when Laura Barton accepts an invitation to Wakanda with her two elder (two remaining) children.  It’s painful, but the pain doesn’t take away the good parts. 


	3. Chapter 3

In her searching Wanda finally touches another mind.  It is not like Vision, this mind is human, but there is something in it familiar.  It is not the trace of the mindstone, but it is close.

She does not know who it is, so she does the sensible thing and asks.

“Would you like some tea?” says Stephen Strange.  Wanda says thank you politely.  His appearance reminds her confusingly of Stark, but his manner is older.  She is very aware of both his own power, and the power of Wong, his associate who has left them alone but not before pinning Wanda with a long stare she understands as both offer and warning.

“What do you know of Thanos?” she asks Strange.

“I have faced him,” he says, and gives her an account of confronting Thanos, fighting Thanos, listening to Thanos monologue about his motives.

“That’s his reason?” Wanda says, horrified.  “But people increase so fast.  How long before he is back?  A few decades?  A century?”

She straightens her back, facing the task ahead.   “Can you find the Stones?”

“The Time Stone – I hope so.  But the pinpointing is harder than it should be.  It is as though time itself is twisted.  I have tried searching the futures and they lead back to the past.”

A few years ago that would have been nonsense.  Now Wanda thinks she understands.

~~~

Eventually the remains of the group who once called themselves Guardians go back to Titan.  It was Thanos’ homeworld after all.   There might be some clues there. 

Instead of the desolate world they left, there is a thriving shanty settlement.  They are quite pleased to see Quill, Drax and Mantis; it’s the first time they’ve had visitors.  A large pile of rocks introduces itself as Korg.  Drax declares “Take us to your leader,” because that’s the sort of thing Drax does.

“We have an egalitarian Council until the King comes back,” Korg tells him.  Eventually they sort out that the missing King is Pirate-Angel.

They have no ideas on where Thanos might be, but they do have something significant.  It’s blue, glows and Quill’s senses start tingling instantly.

“So it’s one of those damn things.  Where the hell did it come from?”

“It was here when we arrived,” says a woman who’d introduced herself as Val, and been adamant that she’s definitely not part of any damn Council, she’s just here to fight things, (the woman called Sif had rolled her eyes at that.)

“It wasn’t here when we were,” says Mantis, “This was one of the stones in the Gauntlet.”

“So how do we use it to kill Thanos?”

“You don’t,” Sif says.  “This Stone’s power is to make distances small.  And there is nobody here with the power to wield it even for that.”

“I’ve held one of these before,” Quill asserts.  Neither Sif nor Val look impressed.  And beneath the boast he hadn’t known what he was doing and he doesn’t know how to do it again.  The Gamora in his dream had said he needed to find more than one Stone.  His dreams may be smart.  She’d also said he shouldn’t be after revenge.  He doesn’t agree yet, but he looks at the community on Titan, and knows he doesn’t want it hurt.

“That thing’s dangerous,” he says.  “People will come after it.”

“That’s why we’re keeping it,” says Sif firmly.  “If Asgard does not defend, then we might as well quit trying to be Asgard.”

“You believe in fighting,” says Drax approvingly.

“Sure,” says Val.

When Quill and Drax leave to look for the other Stones, Mantis stays behind.

~~~

“The problem with Americans is that they think science and magic are separate.  They are no more different that the areas you call physics and chemistry are different.”  Zawavari is T’Challa’s deputy on the Wakandan research team.  He has travelled all over Africa and been called a witch-doctor in most of it.  It doesn’t bother him. 

“I’ve come to agree,” Jane says. 

“A radical position,” says Strange.  “But worth following.”

The system the team has developed uses the field generated by vibranium to heighten the traces left by contact with mystical objects.  A cavern in the Wakanda’s great Night Mountain is their testing centre, with the system first developed by Shuri to read Bucky’s memories used to focus Jane’s recollections being bonded with the Reality Stone, in the hope of picking up traces of the Stone’s subsequent path.  The Stone proves much closer than anyone had expected. 

“Greenwich, London?” says Hope.  “Really?” 

“I wonder if it was somehow drawn to its own past?”  Jane says.  “That could be a clue.”

The Stone is being used by a local gang boss, or rather he’s trying quite ineptly to use it.  So far all he’s managed to do is make a couple of people vanish, one of whom turned up with a splitting headache twelve days later.  The Avengers turnout to get the Stone feels like overkill.

Frustratingly their efforts to trace the Mind Stone and the Time Stone, which should have been the easiest given their two powerful magic users’ history with them, remain futile.  Still a breakthrough happens with the Space Stone, when they realise that the Stones have a harmony that means the aura of the Reality Stone can be triangulated with Bucky’s memories in order to further boost the trace signal.  A full location will take a little longer, but they are homing in.

“If we did find the Time Stone,” Peter asks Strange, “Could you turn back time and change things?”

“It’s been too long.  Minor tears in the material of time can be sustained, but to twist and stretch time this far could cause the entire fabric to tear apart.”

“You mean you’d break the universe,” says Hope drily.

“Pretty much.”

There’s a long silence after that.

~~~

Wanda works with Stephen Strange a good deal.  He’s an ally to her rather than a friend, they don’t talk about the personal.  She soon learns everything he says has a reason behind it.

“My teacher once told me that her seeing of the future could never extend beyond her own death.  When I saw beyond my own, I thought I had surpassed her.  But I lived.  Random.  Uncontrollable.”

“The world beyond your death.  What happened?”

“Those that lived found a way to bring the dead back.”  Strange grimaces.  “Perhaps after all it was because my death was temporary I could see that future.”

“If they could do it,” says Wanda, with a rush of hope, “Why can’t we?  How did they do it?”

“I did not see enough to tell you that.  My ability to pause time is still limited, I could not see things minute-by-minute.  It was an edited highlights.  No, not even that.  It was a random ‘last time on’ recap before a TV show.”

“But there is a way!  There has to be a way.”

~~~

It starts small.  Hope doesn’t have many photographs on display, but Hank had had a framed one of her graduation; she had put it away in a drawer and it’s when going through the drawer she finds the picture and it’s wrong.  Because it’s not her father there, it’s her mother.  Janet at an age Hope had never known her.  Hope doesn’t think of herself as easily unnerved, but her first reaction is to shove the photograph back in the drawer.  When she nerves herself to get it out it shows Hank again.

Pepper wakes up one morning wearing a wedding ring.  It’s inexplicable. Security checks confirm nobody was in her room.  She tries not to show how much it frightens her, especially when the ring vanishes from the tray she had left it in.

~~~

Extensive triangulation gets a fix on the Space Stone.  Next step is to get there.  Wakanda has its own space programme, but they haven’t mastered faster than light drives yet.  Strange isn’t powerful enough to travel between planets by portal. 

“I’m sure I can change that,” he says.

“WE can change it,” says Zawavari.

Strange and Wanda work together, finding a way to combine their different powers, while the Wakandan research team focus the vibranium field to boost them.  Strange and Zawavari have regular fights about methods.  Zawavari usually wins, after all this is his home territory. 

“Do you think there is any significance in it being on Titan?”  A’Kane asks, looking up from her calculations.

“I feel the team should be prepared for the worst,” says T’Challa.

Once again it is overkill.  When Strange and Wanda step through the portal with Sam and Hope, they are met by some really quite friendly Asgardians.  There is an extended debate about whether to leave the Stone there, and how safe it is to have two Stones on the same planet.  Eventually they decide to leave the Reality Stone on Earth and the Space Stone on Titan for now, but take steps to ensure they can move between the planets easily.

It’s hard to tell the Asgardians Thor won’t be returning; however most of them take it better than expected. 

“A king will return,” says one man.

“Or a queen,” says a younger woman firmly.

“That’s straight out of Tolkien,” says Strange.  “I don’t suppose any of you have history with walking trees?”

At last, some good news.  Groot and Mantis’ joy is a delight.

~~~

It’s a chat between Bucky and Jane that gives the next clue, when Jane mentions her dreams of Thor.  “It’s almost annoying.  I broke it off because it couldn’t work.  He would leave for months, then act like he’d been gone a long weekend.  Now he’s bothering my dreams.  He’s not the only person I’d lost, but he’s the one I dream of, and it doesn’t feel right.”

Following lengthy note comparing, a long conversation with Wanda and some even longer interpreting of Groot by Bucky (some of the others can understand him now, but Jane hasn’t learned Groot yet) the four of them have some theories.  To test those theories further Jane and A’Kane get out the equipment Shuri had once used to make a scan of Bucky’s memories.  A’Kane had worked closely enough with Shuri to revive it and create reconstructions of Jane, Wanda and Bucky’s dreams (adapting it for Groot proves too much of a challenge).  They don’t get much from Wanda’s dreams of Vision, but it is clear that events in some of Jane’s and Bucky’s dreams match up.  Whatever is at the root of this, it isn’t just in their heads.

“What jumps out,” Jane says at a meeting of the science team, “is that everyone who has been having these dreams has a close connection with one of the Stones.  Aether, or Reality Stone, for me, Space Stone for Bucky, Mind Stone for Wanda and Power for Groot.”  That one’s complicated.  What they have constructed is that although Groot hadn’t handled the Power Stone he had been surrounded by Stone radiation while still a twig.  “The only person who has a connection with a Stone and hasn’t had these dreams is Stephen.”

“What does it mean?” says T’Challa.

“We don’t know yet.”

~~~

New Asgardia on former Titan isn’t a paradise.  It has the squabbles, the rivalries, the downright screaming rows, fortunately without any serious injuries so far.  Sif is a peacemaker, unabashedly using her old friendship with Thor to claim the right to speak in the king’s name.  Valkyrie wryly respects the approach, but she hasn’t the patience for that type of diplomacy.  She’s bored, when she’s bored she remembers too much, when she remembers she wants to drink.  Most of the Asgardian survivors are farming families, who have adapted pretty fast to Titan’s terrain, and they’ve figured out how to brew ale and mead, but after Sakaar alcohol it’s not strong enough and there’s nothing to give a challenge, an adrenaline rush. 

An angry tree isn’t even in the top twenty strangest things Valkyrie had seen, but finding someone mad at the world is always welcome.  She’s not so at ease with Mantis, but Mantis has formed a friendship with Korg.  The survivors from Sakaar still mostly stick together, a group with enough variety that Mantis and Groot fit easily among them.  Sif has offered to try and organise repatriation, but most of them have little to go back to.  Korg’s good cheer sets the tone for the whole, despite their losses.

The human visitors come and go, part of an exchange programme to foster good relations.   Valkyrie keeps being asked to join, but frankly she hasn’t taken to the idea of Earth.

“You’re just being perverse,” Sif says.  “You keep complaining there’s no good fights here.  There are fights on Earth.”

“Humans are stupidly breakable.  There’s no challenge,” Valkyrie says, and goes off to spar with Groot.

Mantis has finally managed to contact Groot’s other friends to tell them he is alive.  They speak, briefly, over a bad connection (‘Rocket was always the fixer.’ Mantis says sadly), but it becomes clear that although they are pleased Groot survived they are not coming back to New Asgardia.  Apparently they’d said Groot is still a sapling and shouldn’t be involved in Revenge quests.  This makes Groot angry again.  Valkyrie approves.

~~~

Kisani summons to T’Challa to the cavern where they had been regrowing the heart-shaped herb.  The plants are gone, their home as devastated as it had been after Kilmonger’s raid.   They return two days later as T’Challa is talking to Kisani in the cavern, before their eyes it is no longer empty.

Sam walks through a door in Wakanda one day and finds himself in his old apartment in DC.  Not knowing what else to do he flicks on the TV and finds everything unbelievably … normal.  Old normal, not post-Annihilation normal.  Halfway through the morning he gets a call from the VA asking why he hasn’t reported for work.  He’s only just finished concocting an excuse when it fades around him, and he’s back in Wakanda.

Ava finds herself in another reality entirely.  This world seems just as devastated, but SHIELD is everywhere, the logo plastered on buildings alongside giant screens extoling the governments benevolence, SHIELD labelled drones patrolling the streets.  She moves through the crowds, invisible (yet without pain), increasingly afraid this is her new normal, until she finds herself in the New York facility in her familiar reality with Hill checking reports.  The most frightening thing was that the night had been a cloudless one and yet whole constellations were missing from the skies. 

The number of incidents is growing.  It starts to make news.  A world already devastated and traumatised is gripped by new fears.  Sam and Pepper find themselves fielding questions about it in interviews. 

Even countries which are ruled by brutal dictators (many of them democracies until recently) begin to run news features. 

The worst time is when the stars change.

~~~

The team had worked tirelessly to map the field put out by the Reality Stone, to see if they can trace the others.  Once they know the Space Stone is on Titan; that makes a good check point.  They find that the Reality Stone does indeed seem to maintain tenuous but traceable connection to the Space Stone, and there are pointers to the Power Stone enhanced with the help of Groot.  But for the other Stones they find only severed threads, like snapped portions of spider web. 

They do, however, find the program can extend beyond what it was originally designed to do. 

“I did not just sit with the Time Stone in a locket,” Strange says, glaring at Zawavari, who has just made a crack about ‘Do-nothing Americans’.  “I learned to identify points where Time was interfered with.  The fourteenth century was quite a mess, explains a lot really.”

“Vision and I found the Mind Stone retained echoes of its former uses,” Wanda volunteers. 

Since fighting Thanos is the point, learning how the Stone had been used in the past will, as A’Kane is quick to point out, get them an idea of how they can use it in the future.  But the project quickly grows beyond that, as the team comes to believe they can use the Stone to create a map of Reality.

“Like a timeline, but multi-dimensional,” says Jane eagerly.

“And this will help to fight Thanos how?” says practical Hope.  But Zawavari and Strange, united for once by the keen glint of a scientist on the trail of discovery, support Jane, and the result is stunning.

“Reality is TORN,” Jane says, horror in her voice, as the team collate their results.

“The rips extend in all direction,” Zawavari concurs, “but most of them can be traced back to Thanos’ using the Gauntlet in Wakanda.  This is why the Reality slips have been happening.  The whole fabric is damaged, the tears growing beneath the strain.”

“We don’t know what caused this,” Wanda says, fear in her voice, because once again she has let herself love.  She has children now.  “He killed half of all life, but horrible as it was, deaths should not have torn Reality this way.”

They contemplate the hologram that circles in the centre of the room in silence for a time.  It looks part like a star map, part like several spider webs spun through each other, and part like a paint explosion, but the damage is all too obvious.

“Doctor,” T’Challa says at last, “You said that you say a reality where the snap was reversed, but in that future you were dead.  Was anyone here alive?”

“Not that I saw,” says Strange.  “As far as I recall, everyone I noticed alive in that future is dead in this one.”

“As in the Dreamworld some have experienced,” T’Challa says.  He continues to stare at the hologram.  “Did you see any of the Stones.”  His gaze moves now, to Wanda, to Jane, to Bucky.  “Have any of you?  Half of life is gone.  And half the Stones are gone.  Yet in dreams and visions the dead live on.”

“What if…” Jane begins…

“The dead are not truly dead…” says Wanda…

“It would upend everything…” says Strange…

“But if the universe could divide,” says Zawavari.

“Thanos had never wielded all the Stones,” says T’Challa.  “And he was injured.  If he used them wrongly, if he didn’t achieve what he intended….”

“As a hypothesis,” Strange says, “It’s worth exploring.”

~~~

The wounds don’t heal.  The dead are still dead and it’s still wrong.

But they are rebuilding, and that is something to take pride in.

It’s Cassie who finally comes up with the name.  “We should call ourselves Redeemers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story grew out of my frustration with the end of Infinity War, not so much the Snap happening as with who was snapped, as it felt like some really interesting arcs - in particularly Wanda and the Guardians - got cut off at the knees. This allowed me to give Snapped characters some focus, and also play with some new character combinations.

**Author's Note:**

> The US government, or a faction of it at least, supplying Chitauri-based weapons to terrorists, comes from Marvel's Prelude to Infinity War comic, which is supposedly MCU canon compliant.


End file.
